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the cast and crew, and caused Ron Perlman to break character and turn to

the camera to say "Oh my god!", leading to fears that he had ruined the

once in a lifetime take. However, there was enough of a pause between

Weaver's basket and Perlman's statement for the film's editors to cut

the scene accordingly during post-production. The ball was out of frame

for a moment during the shot, and Pitof offered to edit it so that the

ball was on-screen for the entire scene, but Weaver refused.cite-ref-bball-19-0[18]

The film's script was laid out similar to a comic book, with pictures on

the left and dialog and descriptions on the right. Jeunet planned every

shot, which made it easier for visual effects artists to do their work.

Blue Sky Studios was hired to create the first CGI Aliens to appear on

film. Impressed with the company's work on Joe's Apartment creating CGI

cockroaches, Jeunet and Pitof opted to hire the company to create 30 to

40 shots of CGI Aliens. The decision was made to use CGI Aliens rather

than puppets or suited actors whenever the creatures' legs were in

frame, as Jeunet felt that a man in a suit is easy to distinguish when

the full body is seen.cite-ref-cgi-aliens-20-0[19]

All of the spaceships in the film were miniatures, as visual effects

supervisors believed CGI was not effective enough to create realistic

spaceships. The USM Auriga was originally designed by artist Nigel

Phelps and resembled a medical instrument. This design proved to be too

vertical for the film's opening shot, in which the camera pans out to

show the ship, and did not appear satisfactory in the film's 2.35:1

aspect ratio. Three days before the design had to be finalized, Jeunet

rejected it. Phelps, production illustrator Jim Martin, and

concept artist Sylvain Despretz were tasked to redesign the ship. Jeunet

felt Martin's design was too much like a space station, while he

accepted Despretz's design due to its streamlined and horizontal

appearance.cite-ref-scale-21-0[20]

Argonaut Games, developer of the film's tie-in video game, was also

tasked to create a game that would appear in the film titled Atom Zone.

The game was created within a time frame of a few days and involved the

building of custom hardware to run the game which briefly appears during

the film's introduction of the Betty's crew.cite-ref-eurogamer-22-0[21]

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